Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Bird F***ing Flu.

Sumeyya Mamuk considered the chickens in her backyard to be beloved pets. The 8-year-old girl fed them, petted them and took care of them. When they started to get sick and die, she hugged them and tenderly kissed them goodbye. The next morning, her face and eyes were swollen and she had a high fever. Her father took her to a hospital, and five days later she was confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

"All the cases that have been reported so far have involved children playing with dead chickens, people who have touched birds that have been sick and then died," said Guenael Rodier, a doctor with the WHO team in eastern Turkey. "At the moment, all the cases we are observing are small cases, family-based, and always involving a dead chicken."